The Nosto study confirms that smartphone users influence holiday retail sales. Image credit: Nosto
Mobile phones account for 67 percent of traffic to fashion retail sites and drive 52 percent of revenue, per early analyses of fashion shopping worldwide this holiday season. Conversion rates on mobile phones also increased 53 percent from the previous year as consumers grow more used to buying fashion items on their smartphones and retailers improve their personalization technology. The data comes from Nosto, an artificial intelligence-backed ecommerce personalization platform that studied millions of shopping visits to fashion sites over Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Tap dance The performance metrics also suggest that consumers are increasingly shopping on smartphones. Conversion rates went up from 2.18 percent last year to 3.33 percent this year. That said, the mobile conversion rate compared to desktop’s 6.2 percent still indicates that online retailers need to improve their mobile experience. According to Nosto data, holiday shoppers on their smartphones are spending 9 percent less per order than consumers on computers. Also, smartphone users spent fewer minutes on the site compared to the PC site and are 10 percent more likely to abandon their shopping cart than desktop visitors: 76 percent versus 66 percent. “As they’re making shorter visits on a smaller screen, you’d expect mobile fashion shoppers to be harder to convince to make a purchase, and to be less likely to place larger orders, which we see in the data.” said Jim Lofgren, CEO of Nosto, in a statement. “But now that online fashion shopping is overwhelmingly mobile, being successful as a retailer comes down to having a truly mobile-first mentality: making it easy for shoppers to find their way around your site and quickly find just the products they want, and to check out with minimum effort,” he said. “That’s where using artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive personalization comes in. You can maximize the space and time on a mobile phone screen by automatically showing shoppers the most relevant shopping experience based on their behavior, all in real-time. “In fact, it’s now possible to instantly change the layout of the page and ensure shoppers are seeing the most appropriate images, offers and related content that might interest them.” NOSTO’S DATA confirmed that digital shopping is on the upswing. Cross-device data shows a 15 percent jump in traffic year-over-year to fashion retail sites Black Friday through Cyber Monday, with a 78 percent increase in online sales. Personalization of digital experiences has much to do with this growth in ecommerce. "The numbers suggest there's more opportunity than ever for fashion retail to build online sales in the run up to the holidays,” Mr. Lofgren stated. “But you have to make sure you're delivering the best experiences you can to truly embrace that fact," he said.